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Mayor of El Monte

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City of El Monte

Mayor of El Monte

El Monte's Mayor is directly elected and presides over the City Council. The Council has seven members. It includes the Mayor plus six district members. The Council sets the budget and land-use policy. The Mayor's term is two years. That is the shortest term of any elected office in El Monte. An appointed city manager runs day-to-day operations.

El Monte elects its Mayor citywide. Incumbent Jessica Ancona faces her own Mayor Pro Tem, Viviana Longoria. A third candidate, Christine R. Sarmiento, is also running. There is no June primary for city offices. All three go straight to the November 3 ballot. Whoever gets the most votes wins outright.

The winner takes a 2-year term — the shortest on El Monte's ballot — presiding over City Council meetings and representing the city publicly, while casting one of seven votes on the budget, land use, and city ordinances alongside six district councilmembers. Day-to-day city operations run through an appointed city manager, not the Mayor's office.

This is a rematch within one governing team: Longoria serves as Ancona's own Mayor Pro Tem, so the choice turns less on ideology than on how each has used their current office — and how much weight you give a June 2025 censure of the incumbent over a settled lawsuit — against a third candidate with no local record to weigh.

Jessica Ancona

Jessica Ancona is the incumbent Mayor and a high school assistant principal. She is a lifelong El Monte resident. She was first elected to the City Council in 2018. Before that she served five years on the El Monte City School District board. She is seeking a second term as Mayor. She points to a youth-focused tobacco and vape ordinance from her council years. She also points to school joint-use agreements from those years. In June 2025 the City Council censured her by a 6-1 vote. That came after the city paid $175,000 to settle a resident's lawsuit alleging retaliation.

Viviana Longoria

Viviana Longoria is the sitting Mayor Pro Tem and District 4 councilmember. They are a Head Start child-development specialist. They served as City Treasurer before winning their council seat in 2024. They are running for Mayor on public safety and economic development. They say they would build on the city's current fiscal approach, not break from it. The incumbent they are challenging helped give them that title.

Christine R. Sarmiento

Christine R. Sarmiento is a Los Angeles County public health nurse from El Monte. She has no prior elected office or council experience. She is running for Mayor months after an unsuccessful independent run for California Governor. That governor's race was the June 2026 primary. She is campaigning on similar affordability and accountability themes. No local platform, endorsements, or news coverage of her El Monte campaign was found. The only record found was the city's own candidate qualification list.

Your pick

A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot.

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